Conflicting cases made at Victor hearing

Tuesday

Attorneys sparred on the opening day of the civil service hearing of suspended Victor financial chief Michael Dollard.

The town of Victor says its former chief accountant broke the law. The accountant says he’s the victim of a political agenda.

Thus began the civil service hearing Monday for suspended Victor chief accountant Michael Dollard. Arguing before hearing officer Peter Skivington, a Honeoye Falls village justice, the opposing attorneys first laid out their cases.

“Mr. Dollard was the chief accountant, the point person with respect to finances, responsible for following the directives of the Town Board and responsible for following the law,” said the attorney representing the town, Sharon Stiller. “With respect to each of these charges, he did not follow directives and he did not follow the law.”

In his opening statement, Dollard’s attorney, Matthew Fusco, said his client did his job for eight years without incident or reprimand and that he is the victim of “petty politics” on the part of Democrats on the Town Board. The political composition of the board shifted from all Republican a when Democrats John Accorso and John Palomaki were elected in 2007. A third member, Peter Hessney, is a Republican though he ran as a Democrat and has often sided with Accorso and Palomaki.

Dollard, a registered Republican who lives in Monroe County, was hired by former Republican town Supervisor Jack Richter.

Fusco also argued that board members should have paid better attention to what was going into the budget as it was being prepared.

“The question is, who is responsible, the supervisors or the employee being given direction?” he said.

The first witness called by Stiller was Roy McMaster of Elmira-based Capital Markets Advisors, the accounting firm hired by the town to take over budget preparations last October.

Much of McMaster’s testimony centered on Dollard allegedly increasing the pay grades and steps for a number of town employees without the authorization of the Town Board. Town officials did not discover the raises until February. The Town Board then passed a resolution rescinding the increases and reevaluated the town’s salary schedule.

In his testimony, McMaster described a sort of wall of separation between himself and Dollard, leading him to communicate mostly with Tina Kolacyzk, the supervisor’s confidential secretary.

“I understood that there might be an adversarial relationship with Mike Dollard and I wanted to minimize conflict,” he said.

Prodded by Fusco, McMaster went on to say that Hessney told him to “use Tina as an interface to get what I needed from Mike.”

Kolaczyk, who was called to testify later in the day, said she was instructed to act as a go-between by Hessney and board member Jeff Cody, who was then acting supervisor.

While McMaster did not have much direct contact with Dollard at this time, the chief accountant did send him the chart listing the employee pay grades and steps to be included in the 2009 budget, he said, which McMaster requested soon after he was hired.

McMaster, though, said the document was “over-generalized” and did not contain the amount of detail he would have preferred. Still, he said he thought he had enough information complete the budget.

Dollard did not tell McMaster that the salaries included on the schedule were not approved by the Town Board, he said. He never asked, McMaster said, because he had no reason to believe they were not. He also said Dollard did not mention the employee salaries during any of the several budget workshops he attended with Dollard.

The problem with the employee salaries materialized in February, said Kolacyzk, who first learned about it from Parks and Recreation Director Brian Emelson.

“He said he had some people coming in hugging him and others who were concerned,” she said.

Kolacyzk then said she compared the salary levels in the 2009 budget with the previous year’s salaries and was “surprised” to see the results. It was the first time to her knowledge that anyone took at closer look at the salaries, she testified.

She had not compared the salary figures because, like McMaster, she assumed they were correct.
Despite being pressed by Skivington, McMaster could not say why, exactly, the town decided to hire his company to complete the town’s budget. He said that he assumed town officials were not happy with the work Dollard had done.

Kolacyzk said Cody and Hessney told her Dollard was being taken off of the budget due to mistakes they found in an earlier budget draft. She also believed it had something to do with a tense meeting among Dollard, Hessney and Palomaki about the budget just before Capital Markets Advisors was hired, she said.

McMaster also testified that he had no conflicts during the few interactions he had with Dollard and that the two conducted a “professional” relationship. Likewise, Kolaczyk testified that she “never had a problem” working with Dollard.

Monday’s hearing drew a handful of spectators who have previously voiced their support for Dollard and slammed the hearing as a show trial.

One of them, former Town Justice John Dwyer, admonished the Town Board at a recent meeting and called the hearing “a political crucifixion, just in time for Easter.”

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